Writers that want to become published authors don’t have to go through the traditional route of pitching their work to a publishing house. Instead, they can self-publish. However, making that decision, or choosing which way to go is no easy task. Any writer that wants to get published should know the pros and cons to both ways before making a decision.
1. Traditional publishing takes time
Traditional publishing involves delivering a query letter, by the authors themselves or literary agents, a synopsis and usually the first few chapters of the book to a publishing house – and then a lot of waiting. The author might wait up to six months to get an answer from the publishing house, especially if it’s a big one, since they get a lot of queries from many writers and agents. Additionally, the first publishing house you’ve pitched your book to might not decide to pick up the book, so you have to pitch your book to several, and wait for one of them to hopefully pick up your book. But the waiting doesn’t stop there – you will probably wait for another year, or at least six months before you can hold a print of your finished book in your hands.
2. Self-publishing is a financial risk
With self-publishing, it will take a lesser amount of time until you have a physical print, unless you decide to publish just an e-book. This approach means you have to finance everything, from proofreading and editing the manuscript, to book cover design, marketing and distributing the book. Many authors try to do all of these things by themselves – but if they have little knowledge of those fields, their books might end looking amateurish and readers will not buy them, and that means that the financial investment will not pay off. On the other hand…
3. Traditional publishing controls everything
When you sell your manuscript to a publisher, you get paid a royalty from each copy that is sold. The good thing is that you get paid an advance of those royalties before your book hits the stores. But, this means that the publisher now has control over the final product, and while that means that you get professional editors, who will proofread, edit and polish your manuscript into (hopefully) the best version of itself, the editor might decide to change a lot of things that might completely change the story. Also, many writers despair over the covers, especially if they are sending a different message about the contents of the book.
4. Marketing and promotion
The promotion and the marketing of the book are the most important part of the publishing process. If you are self-publishing, even through Amazon and other platforms, if you don’t market the book, it will not sell; no matter how good it is, because the readers simply will not know that your book exists! On the other hand, if you go the traditional route, the publishing house will take care of the promotion and the marketing of the book, and they will ensure that your book can be distributed beyond the market you would reach on your own, which would lead to higher profits.
5. Credibility
A stigma still follows self-published books, although that has begun to change in recent years. Books that were first self-published through Amazon get noticed by publishing houses and the authors sell the publishing rights for substantial amounts of money. But the fact that a book is self-published might put the reader off, since they feel a sense of certainty that a book published by a big publishing house, means it must be done professionally and is therefore, better than a self-published book. This is wrong, of course, especially since the success of a book depends not only on genre and what’s mainstream at the moment, but also on how saturated the genre is. But, the opinion remains that anyone can self-publish a book, whether they are talented or have experience, and through that, self-publishing loses prestige and credibility.
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Georgina Roy wants to live in a world filled with magic. As a 22-year-old art student, she’s moonlighting as a writer and is content to fill notebooks and sketchbooks with magical creatures and amazing new worlds. When she is not at school, or scribbling away in a notebook, you can usually find her curled up, reading a good urban fantasy novel, or writing on her laptop, trying to create her own.